Look I had to be sure, I've never seen anyone actually suggest eminent domain so casually before. The only times I've seen it have been in grainy, fuzzy news reports from the 80's.
Eminent domain is used daily in the US and around the world. It would literally be impossible to build and maintain a transportation network without it.
Okay but we're talking about razing houses and replacing it not with infrastructure and transportation networks but with more housing in a state with already a quarter of the nation's homeless population.
I have so many questions about what happens in that regional development council hypothetical with astronomically high housing prices and homelessness:
- Do you play benevolent city planner and let current residents in these low density zones stay, redevelop around them? This is already happening without much help needed from the city, hastening that seems to be a good way to add to the homeless population resulting from displaced families fleeing the inevitable raise in property value and therefore taxes, no?
- Do you play well meaning but forward marching city planner who has to watch families move out of their city acquired land and homes, sure probably with a check in hand and a pat on the back hoping they make it-when realistically the market probably, very likely (A) don't have room for them or (B) probably out of their financial range to even relocate to nearby neighborhoods?
I just don't see a path forward here for SF using eminent domain that doesn't come with some very painful outcomes that probably exacerbate the very problem it would intend to solve. An unforced error.
Perhaps I'm overthinking the conceit here, but it's an experience I've lived through, so maybe that explains why my eyebrow immediately shot up.
> Okay but we're talking about razing houses and replacing it not with infrastructure and transportation networks but with more housing
Who’s talking about that?
All you have to do, literally, is just stop actively preventing people from building apartment buildings. The market will have no trouble taking care of the rest.
I don't understand the outcomes of the second scenario. Wouldn't adding housing stock A) make more room for them and B) as a result, lower the cost to stay within the neighborhood
Won't their checks be for fair market value of their expropriate property? So by definition, they should be able to relocate within the neighborhood?
>Won't their checks be for fair market value of their expropriate property?
As someone who's been on the short end of eminent domain for a freeway offramp in north LA, nope. The city tends to hire their own appraisers with their own way of looking at things. Considering that most eminent domain cases run through single family housing without existing homebuilder contracts with the city (at this point, we're talking homes before 1980), there are a litany of ways in which a city appraiser can devalue the house. Yes, of course you can hire an appraiser go to bat for you.
The short and sweet of it is that the city can use things like "you never applied for a permit to build this addition" or "your re-roofing was never replaced with high wind resistant (no joke) tar." At this point, we're talking multiple visits from an appraiser (assuming you can find one willing to deal with city bureaucracy), and lawyer fees to handle the entire case.
That doesn't even begin to address the emotional quagmire of the fact that they knocked on _your_ door. You'll probably need to need to talk to a counselor for that one.